Late-night television host James Corden said on Monday he feels “utter disgust and anger” over the Supreme Court’s Friday decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, arguing that basic human rights were “wiped out in a moment” by politically motivated justices.
In a promo video uploaded to the YouTube account for his CBS show “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” the British television host, speaking from his hometown of London, blasted the conservative justices, saying their decision “endangers millions upon millions” of women’s lives.
“A woman’s right to choose what happens to her own body, wiped out in a moment,” Corden said, standing in front of Parliament to compare British abortion laws to the new restrictions in the U.S. allowed by the reversal of Roe.
“In the land of the American dream — the land of the free, a country which prides itself on the protection of an individual’s liberties — we move instantly back to a dark age where a court has imposed a minority political view on a country for decades to come,” the talk show host said.
The Supreme Court’s stunning reversal of the landmark precedent that enshrined abortion rights into law has sent shockwaves through America and around the world.
Around half the states in the U.S. are expected to ban or severely limit abortion access, while others are moving to protect abortion rights more firmly.
Roe’s reversal was expected after Politico published a leaked draft opinion earlier this year showing the court’s conservative majority was prepared to overturn Roe.
After the leak, Corden said he was “gobsmacked” by the court’s pending decision and pointed to the fact that most Americans do not want the constitutional right to abortion overturned.
“It’s mystifying. It’s baffling,” said Corden in May. “Make no mistake, this is the biggest rollback in modern human rights in U.S. history.”
On Monday, Corden, who is raising his family in the U.S., said he was still “struggling to get his head around this.”
“To say that I’m outraged and devastated would be an understatement,” he said. “It’s incomprehensible that in 2022, we should even have to say out loud that women should be entitled to control their own lives and bodies, let alone live in a country that won’t allow it.”